Blog of Peter Epp

Why Routers Suck

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Published: 11:16pm May 13th, 2010
Updated: 4:20pm August 20th, 2011

I have never had so much trouble with a router than I did recently with the D-Link DIR-130.  It was recommended to us by a very high paid technician who'd had a lot of experience with them and had found them very good particularly for business who use VPNs.

But this one just sucks!  Not only can it not manage to run reliably, but:

• It's configuration database gets corrupted if you configure it from Safari
• It craps out if you try to configure certain things using remote access to the configuration (outside your home/office network)
• When it craps out, you have to factory reset and restore the firmware and your configuration
• D-Link uses a tech support call center in India with people who can't speak or understand English very well, are obviously used to dealing with clueless lay people and are just plain rude. Plus they won't admit when the router actually has a problem, it must be your network or your computer (of course, how could I have been so stupid???)

Bottom line is just don't buy one of these.

I haven't had the greatest luck with other routers in recent years, either.  I used to know that I could rely on Linksys (now owned by Cisco) to be solid and always just work.  But they've been going down hill and have gotten even worse since they were bought out by Cisco.  They don't implement wi-fi standards properly most of the time (mainly Wireless-N) and they just in general don't work well for all the things you want to do.

There are so few companies these days that will make a good quality product without cutting corners.  This is due to the drive for lower prices and consumers who mostly have no clue about the real value of the electronic products they buy other than the advertised features they can measure it by.  You compare a bunch of products, they all advertise a list of features, so you make your decision based on which features you need and who can offers those features for the lowest price.  The time and effort (or lack thereof) that was put into making the thing is pretty much irrelevant to you even though it's going to make the biggest difference to your experience with the product.

Everyone is now aiming to include the most features for the least money, resulting in a large number of choices and no consistency in quality, even between one model of a single brand and the next. Quality is sacrificed to push out more for less to consumers who mostly don't have the expertise to really have any idea of where the real value in the products lie. They can only go by a list of features compared to prices amongst a bunch of different brands and models.

Apple is one of the only companies left in the electronics and computer industry who doesn't sacrifice quality and is will to charge the price for it. Yes, Steve Jobs is a cut-throat business man who's looking to make as much profit as he can, but so is every other company out there. He just does it differently and people don't like it very much. However, the Apple Airport Extreme base station router is by far the best for home users. You'll pay considerably more for it than equivalent routers from other brands, but what you will get is something that works reliably 99% of the time right of the box with minimal hassle. Not only that but they give you a really nice and user-friendly configuration program to go with it, not some cruddy and confusing web interface full of a lot of technical terms for the most basic configuration options.

At this point I have no idea what sort of router is good for business use, particularly on a Mac network, but will post a comment here when we've found one that's good and solid.

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